In-home monitoring for the purpose of health management of chronic disease patients typically requires the patients to attach monitors of various kinds to their bodies, actuate the monitors to take various bio-information readings, and then hook up the monitor to a communication device, and then send the readings taken to a monitoring station or health care provider. Various types of monitors may be used to gather bio-information data regarding the patient. Such monitors may take the patient's blood pressure, temperature, pulse, SpO2, CO, ICG, ECG, respiration, blood glucose, and the like. Such information can provide valuable feedback on the health status of the patient to the health care provider. Current technology allows for patients to take regular measurements at home that get collected and transferred, typically via a standard telephone line, to a data collection system, or directly to a health care provider. This methodology is a significant improvement over techniques that require patients to keep written logs of measurements taken themselves. Such written logs are subject to errors or missing data, and are usually only reviewed by a healthcare provider during routine checkups. In addition, some patients do not want to cooperate and take the readings that are needed, posing an additional problem to the healthcare provider.
There is a need for a remote bio-information monitoring system which can be passively used by the patient that can take the various measurements at selected time intervals as well as at random times without patient intervention. There is also a need to be able to download the bio-information measurements to a monitoring station or healthcare provider without requiring any actions on the part of the patient being monitored, eliminating the need for the patient to personally record the measurements, or connect the monitoring device to a telephone line to download and transmit the data. The present invention meets these and other needs in the art.